My attempts to help Scia bring her manipulation of space closer to what I can achieve were mostly fruitless, but it was still enjoyable to work with her.

She chirps again, happy that she’s able to hold the slightly shrunk state once more. I hiss a congratulations. Her reactions are far more entertaining than the achievement itself, so I find myself cheering her on whenever she thinks she’s done something impressive.

Scia hops once and blinks between my eyes. The action destabilises her wrinkle, snapping her back to normal size, but she doesn’t notice. Her wings spread wide and she presses into my scales.

Those wrinkles don’t allow her much the same freedom my change in size allows, but there’s much room for improvement. In the future, she could make herself so small that she’d be able to fit between my scales with no issue, even in my smallest form. Maybe she can fold the space along my back and give herself a pocket where she can hide even when I’m swimming through magma or fighting beasts.

If she can improve that spatial manipulation of hers — which I’ve already seen evidence of — then she might one day handle creating bends for my full size without passing out. Our partnership will allow nothing to threaten us; with distortions always available for me, competitors could not beat us and Titans will not catch us.

Of course, getting Scia to the point where she can make rifts that extend far enough to run from Titans might as well be an eternity away. How can I help her grow? What can I do to improve her strengths?

After how much she has changed me, the least I can do is help her grow. If not to help her survive, then to benefit myself. Scia’s company is the only way I’ll get my holes and bends in the areas without.

What would I be like if I’d never met her? Looking at my actions since I found her in the jaws of that centipede so long ago leaves no doubt that I have changed.

Back then, I had been so confused; nothing I felt made sense. The world had been spun upside down with the loss of my territory and the appearance of beings greater than myself. I’d felt the creeping inclusion of emotions for a long while before, but it wasn’t until everything went wrong that I felt how strong they could be. All I could do in such times was lash out at anything and everything.

When I found Scia crippled, some part of me pitied her. Pity for another creature was something I’d never felt before, and yet I’m glad that because of that emotion I hadn’t understood, I’d never been able to hurt her. Without it, I would have treated her as any other critter I passed in the thousand hunts prior.

She’d clung to me, and I never pushed back as hard as I probably would have, because I’d already sympathised with her plight. Despite being of distant rungs on the food chain, watching Scia in the grasp of a many-limbed creature made me unconsciously see her and myself as one and the same.

Of course, I hadn’t understood at the time. I pushed her away. Tried to scare her off. If it wasn’t for the small bat’s tenacity, I would have succeeded… and never realised what I missed out on.

Plenty of our time together has been rough — not in any small part due to Scia’s recklessness — but those difficult times have allowed me to realise, and experience, the depths of what I consider the horrible emotions. That they aren’t truly terrible, and that they are there not to sabotage my survival, but to expand my mind more than I could have imagined when it was only intelligent and not sapient.

Between guilt at having put Scia in danger, fear at her near loss, and the depression at the thought that she wouldn’t stay by my side; it has been difficult. But I only felt those emotions because of the care I’ve come to feel for her. The warmth that has nothing to do with heat. The comfort that has nothing to do with any energy or the way I contort my body. And amusement that is nothing like any other I’ve felt.

If not for Scia, I may have never discovered the tender half of the bundle. I would have continued to struggle and hate the growth of horrid emotions within my mind. Sure, I would have gotten used to them, but would I have ever learnt the full breadth of them?

There are many emotions I’ve still not come to terms with nor handled well, but knowing what I do now, that there are good sides to them, I believe I will do far better than I once did when handling them.

I’ve already made it past the worst of it. All that lay ahead will be easy in comparison.

❖❖❖

I eye Scia carefully as she naps on the tip of my snout. She spent so long compressing the space around herself that she tired herself out much earlier than normal. I blame the moss; she gets far too energetic after eating.

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While she sleeps, I contort my body in an attempt to change my size… without actually changing my size. After watching Scia come so close to replicating what I can do with my body, I can’t help the temptation. The idea that I could bend space myself is too attractive a proposition to ignore.

If Scia can shrink herself, then surely I’m not leaping to conclusions to say I can imitate what she can do. Having the ability to create distortions for myself would be incredible. The first massive hollowed column I’d found before the Titan destroyed my home. The wide chamber of the Nareau and Ōmukade. And this most recent Graveyard of the Titans. All are places that contain no natural distortions. Considering how uncommon distortions are in places far from my warped tunnels, it is possible the warped tunnels are the only place with them. I hope that’s wrong, but what I’ve seen indicates otherwise.

If I’m to abandon the warped tunnels, then I need a way to create distortions. Maybe that is our way beyond.

I still intend to help Scia improve, but if I can do the same myself… if I can morph space to my whim, I can go anywhere. Even better, if I can figure out how to create bigger distortions, I could teach Scia and be a direct guide rather than just a source of encouragement.

The way my body changes size is natural. Like breathing; there’s barely a thought put into it. I just push and I’m smaller. What I want to do is make that instinctual action an active effort. I need to determine exactly what I’m doing to create such an effect.

That push which changes my size is like a muscle, but where that muscle exactly is, I do not know. It covers the entirety of my body, and at the same time, it doesn’t exist. I tug and shove, making rapid back-and-forth changes to my size, yet the exact mechanism eludes me.

Glaring into the space around my body doesn’t help. Nothing strange is happening. Even keeping my sight strained for any odd nuances of the spatial fabric that I might have missed reveals nothing beyond what I know. No new secrets of how my size shift works reveal themselves, but neither did watching Scia create bends help me understand how she does it. If I’m to learn, I need to lean into the instincts that know what to do.

So I give the size-muscle contradictory orders — pulling and pushing with intense strength — in an effort to get it to reveal something new. Any insight I can use to gain more direct control on the ability. Even if it is limited only to changing the size of things and not to creating distortions… How great would it be to shrink a Titan down to my size?

Unfortunately, despite extensive attempts, the results are lacklustre.

Well, it’s not all bad. I’m satisfied to rely on Scia. I just need to help her grow and we will thrive together.

There may no longer be a place at the top of the food-chain for me, but with Scia, that doesn’t matter. We will carve out a place for ourselves in whatever strange lands lie outside the warped tunnels. Between the two of us, we will escape. Regardless of whether it’s the Titan’s threat, or Beyond’s warning, it is clear we can no longer stay there once we return. And we will return. We will find our way back. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will survive.

A flash of movement strikes the edge of my sight. I twist to focus closer, but the cavern has already collapsed. It collapses with so much power that the next half-dozen pockets linked to it follow suit in rapid succession.

The world around us is hardly stable and these voids within immense flowing rarely last long without something to support them, but they don’t fall apart with this much intensity. They fall apart individually, not bring down those connected by distortions with them.

I keep an eye on the cove nearest linked to those that already collapsed, and move away. I don’t know what might have caused such an occurrence, but it is best to keep our distance.

Deciding it is time to call the search quits for now, I deviate my course toward the abyss rend. It’s in the opposite direction of the collapsed caverns too, so we might as well. Still, I keep an eye on the distortions that connect to the now disappeared regions in case anything strange is going on.

Scia twitches, snapping awake in a moment, but she has no time to shriek a warning before another dozen caverns collapse with unnatural force, disappearing from sight. These are in a completely different direction from the first… and far closer.

I snap against myself, shooting us through a dense network of bends and holes. A spike of pain rushes through my wound, but I ignore it in the rush to get away from the imploding caverns. The last thing I want right now, is to be buried within the earth, where I’ll have no way to find my way back into air.

Scia chirps fearfully, and I watch as her ears flick all around us. I cannot hear anything beyond the constant grinding of earth, but I know her hearing is better than mine. Something is happening. Something is destroying the only haven within the Other Side.

I rush through distortions, but wherever I look, caverns rapidly collapse. The order is random, yet with each breath, another half of the visible caverns disappear.

Right before I dive through the last rift to the only stable cavern I know, I glimpse the cause.

Less than a body length away, a cove collapses beyond a distortion. But before it can fully close, I witness the forest of diamond stalagmites cleave through each wall as they rush to bury the cavern.

There is no longer anywhere else to move. Only this cavern, and the stable one ahead. The rest burst like one of Scia’s favourite berries when she bites into it. Any hole or rift that doesn’t collapse reveals nothing but the depths of earth, or the hard surface of diamond.

With no other option and Scia still squeaking in fear, I dive through the last rift, returning us to the only cavern with some stability. The moment I do, a crystal spike that wasn’t there an instant ago strikes me out of the air. I tumble to the earth. Earth that is quickly replaced by the hard, sharp surface of diamond.

Then a heavy, powerful growl pierces my core. The lynx is here. The lynx tracked us.